India has become a chopper-maker’s dream. It’s got terrible roads, nightmare traffic and a small army of newly rich multi-millionaires and billionaires who prefer to alight from their rooftops and zip to their offices in minutes rather than sit in their cars. That’s despite the cost of $1.5 million to $15 million per chopper.

A joint venture of AgustaWestland and Tata announced this week that they’re building a new helicopter factory in Hyderbad to keep up with demand. Experts say India’s civilians will buy at least 250 choppers in the coming years, and orders are surging 12 percent a year.

“Business people are very keen to take helicopters now because it saves them a lot of time and it’s also safer,” a former Indian Airports Authority chief told The Times.

Some have raised concerns about safety, given recent accidents and the state of some rooftop heliports. But India’s sudden helicopter hunger speaks to the continued rise of the super-rich in the BRIC countries.

Yesterday an Indian whiskey collector paid $94,000 for a bottle of 55-year-old Glenfiddich Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve. India is now home to over 50 billionaires and counting.

Of course, landing a helicopter is easier if live in a private skyscraper.

It’s become an accepted truth that taxes are falling for the rich. Just look at Warren Buffett, who pays a lower rate than his secretary. Or the top 400 earners, who pay an effective rate of 18.1%. Or look at the official rate, which at 35% is half of the 70% rate on the top earners in 1980. Republicans in Washington have blocked any attempt to raise taxes on the top earners, leading to ongoing coverage of the “coddled super-rich.” Less noticed is the fact that taxes for rich people in some states are indeed rising. Yesterday saw two such moves: Maryland’s Senate approved a tax hike on those making $500,000 or more, and California’s governor proposed hiking taxes on those making $300,000 or more. At the end of this year, New York will start generating revenues from a new tax on those earning $300,000 or more. And while New Jersey’s governor has beaten back calls for another millionaire’s tax, the issue could always come back if the economy falters again. In California and Maryland, the proposed tax hike on the top earners generated the usual reaction from both sides. “It was a nod to the more progressive members of our caucus — that we were listening to their concerns,” Maryland’s Democratic Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, told CBS radio. Republican State Sen. E.J. Pipkin said Maryland was “sending the wrong message to job creators.” California Governor Jerry Brown has doubled down on his plans to fix the state’s problems by taxing the wealthy. His original proposal called for raising revenues with a new half-percent sales-tax increase and a tax hike on those making $250,000 or more. His new plan calls for a smaller sales-tax increase and more taxes on the wealthy. The tax hikes will start on those making $250,000 or more, who will see an increase of two percentage points, according to Bloomberg. Those making $1 million or more will pay a tax rate of 13.3%. That means that a million-plus earner in Califonia could pay a combined federal and tax rate of 48.3% — not including local taxes. Whether this is too much or too little depends on your politics. But the fact remains: taxes in some of the states with the most high earners are going up, not down.

Mitt Romney isn’t alone among the one-percenters worried about getting pink slips. A new survey from American Express Publishing and Harrison Group shows that 28% of the top 1% of earners are worried about their jobs. Fully 21% of the one-percenters who are corporate executives fear that they may lose their job over the next year, according to the survey. Even one-percenters who own their own companies are worried. One quarter of those business owners say they worry that their companies may not survive over the next 12 months.

Associated Press

The 1% is also worried about its wealth. Fully 38% worry that they might run out of money at some point during their lives, which is why their average savings rate is 33%. We can all hold the violins, of course. Next to 8% unemployment, a CEO worried about losing his multimillion-dollar paydays pales in comparison. And most Americans would never be lucky enough to save a third of their income. But the anxieties of the elite have a real impact on the economy and recovery. Remember that the top 5% of earners account for more than a third of consumer outlays. If they’re hoarding cash and worried about their companies, they’re not hiring or spending–and thus, not creating jobs. “America’s top One Percent income earners are holding their surplus cash under the nation’s collective mattress,” said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group. “They have yet to recover their optimism for the economy, convinced we are still in a recession and concerned that the recession has more than a year to go before fundamental recovery. ” He said a recovery in the optimism and investments of the wealthy may be two or three years off. Why do you think the one percenters are so worried about their jobs and money?

If you ask the rich about the biggest problem created from their wealth, they will usually say their kids.

EPA

Most of today’s self-made rich didn’t grow up with money (surveys show 75% of millionaires didn’t inherit their wealth). And today’s rich parents expect their kids to grow up with middle-class values– just as they did.

It’s a noble goal. But when those parents are flying the kids around on a private jet or giving them a Mercedes for their Sweet 16, it should come as no surprise that their kids lack the same work ethic and hustle as a middle-class kid.

And so wealthy parents today face an inevitable choice: leaving boatloads of money to kids who aren’t good with money.

Gina Rinehart, the Australian mining billionaire, has cracked open the debate with a strange court battle winding its way through the Australian legal system. In short, Ms. Rinehart inherited a mining empire from her dad. Her three kids were also left with a stake in the family trust. Yet Ms. Rinehart shut them out of their ownership stakes, and now the kids are fighting back.

Court documents cited in the Australian media show that Ms. Rinehart believed the kids weren’t fit to manage their fortune. She said none had ever held a real job, unless it was given to them by the family. “None of the plaintiffs (her children) has the requisite capacity or skill, nor the knowledge, experience, judgment or responsible work ethic to administer a trust in the nature of the trust in particular as part of the growing HPPL Group,” she claimed in court papers.

She added that the kids are “manifestly unsuitable” to manage the fund and that it would be in the “best interests of the beneficiaries to force them to go to work.”

Ms. Rinehart may well be right. But it raises a natural question: who raised these kids? And if Ms. Rinehart played a role, isn’t she basically using her own parenting as the reason to cut them out?

Granted, kids are only partially shaped by the parents. But for a rich parent to criticize their kids as lacking a work ethic seems, well, a bit rich.

Do you think it’s fair for rich parents to criticize their kids for being spoiled?

One of the common refrains in the inequality debate these days is that the one percent has too much influence in Washington. It’s become such a part of conventional wisdom that very few people are willing to refute it in public.

Bloomberg

Ken Griffin

Until now. Hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin said in a rare interview with Melissa Harris of the Chicago Tribune that the very wealthy actually have too little influence in politics. When asked about the influence of people “of his means” he said: “I think they actually have an insufficient influence,” he told the Tribune. “Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system more than ever now owe a duty to protect the system that has created the greatest nation on this planet.” Although he’s given millions of dollars to conservative causes and Super PACS, he said the money is aimed at helping the country, not himself. He says government has become too involved in financial markets and business. “I think if you look at the realm we’re discussing, which is the political realm, I think it would be impossible to find an action by any politician intended to specifically favor either my firm or myself. That’s not the driver of my involvement.” He said that the values of economic freedom are under attack in America and that “this belief that a larger government is what creates prosperity, that a larger government is what creates good (is wrong). We’ve seen that experiment. The Soviet Union collapsed.” Griffin was also asked about the difference between gambling and financial markets and said that there is a “huge difference.” “Gambling is entertainment…Financial markets, what one often refers to as speculation, is really the force by which we move capital to the best and highest use,” he said. He doesn’t talk about taxes for the wealthy being at historically low rates. But he does say that the inequality debate has been harmful and that “some people go through an experience like ’08 and say, you know, ‘The world’s not fair. ‘ ‘” “This is the first time class warfare has really been embraced as a political tool. Because we are looking at an administration that has embraced class warfare as being politically expedient, I do worry about the publicity that comes with being willing to both with my dollars and, more importantly, with my voice to stand for what I believe in.” Do you agree that the wealthy have too little influence in America?

The reasons why the rich give to charity are as varied as the rich themselves.

Some give out of vanity. Some out of guilt. Some for the tax breaks. Some give out of conviction that their success in business makes them equally expert in solving the world’s problems.

Yet perhaps the most powerful and common reason why the rich give is the idea most commonly referred to as “legacy.”

“Legacy” has become so overused and manipulated by wealth-management firms that it’s lost much of its meaning.

But in an article in the Guardian, British telecoms billionaire John Caudwell gives the best definition yet of why legacy drives the rich to give.

It boils down to what’s on your tombstone. “Here lies a Very Successful Businessman,” he says. “Doesn’t really do it, does it? Not quite enough, somehow. You’d want something more.”

He says he’s proud of his business success, the jobs he’s created and the taxes he’s paid. He said he “sacrificed what most people call a normal life” to make his wealth. It’s not a guilt thing.

“Business gives you a massive high,” he told the Guardian. “Doing a great deal, coming up with an inspirational solution . . . It’s very addictive. But it doesn’t last long. In isolation, it’s a bit sterile. It doesn’t reward the soul.”

Caudwell said that he started helping a young girl who had spinal muscular atrophy, providing special wheelchairs and care to give her more independence. Now he’s giving away most of his fortune, with a lot of it going to disabled children.

“You should see the difference,” he says. “Now that’s a reward. That’s a fantastic reward. A totally different reward.”

Caudwell is speaking out in an effort to get more Britons to give to charity. They give about a tenth of the rate of the U.S. rich (which has a lot to do with tax code, the different cultures of wealth and religious giving).

For wealth management firms, Ferrari salesman and gold diggers of both genders, knowing where the millionaires live can be a useful statistic. This week, the IRS released its stats on which states have the largest number of residents with a net worth of $2 million or more. They are: California – 329,000 (or 1.2 percent of total adult population)New York – 160,000 (or 1.1 percent of the adult populationFlorida – 155,000 (or 1.2 percent of total adult population)Texas – 100,000 (or .6 percent of total adult population)Illinois – 83,000 (or .6 percent of total adult population)New Jersey – 71,000 (or 1.1 percent of total adult population)Pennsylvania – 57,000 (or 0.6 percent of total adult population)Massachusetts – 51,000 (or 1.0 percent of total adult population)Ohio – 50,000 (or .6 percent of total adult population)Virginia – 49,000 (or .8 percent of total adult population) There are two take-aways from the list, which is from 2007 (the latest data available). First, it largely tracks population. Eight of the top 10 richest are also among the top 10 most populous. ( Georgia and North Carolina are top 10 by population but not by wealth. New Jersey and Virginia 11 and 12 by population). The second is that the number of multi-millionaires may be very different from the concentration of millionaires, ie the number of rich people per capita. (Ferrari salesman and wealth managers call this “high-net-worth density”). For that ranking, Wyoming holds the top spot, with only 6,000 multi-millionaires accounting for 1.5% of the state’s population. Ranked second was Connecticut, with 1.3%, followed by New Hampshire, Vermont and then California. How do you think the wealth map has changed since 2007? Will California or New York gain or lose?

You don’t have to be an Occupier to understand the two-speed nature of the recovery. While the one percent has rebounded strongly (thanks to stock markets), the 99% has fared less well due to weak jobs and housing. A new report, however, shows that the two recoveries may be even further apart than we thought. A study by Emmanuel Saez shows that in 2009 and 2010, the first year of the current “recovery” the one percent captured 93% of the income growth. That’s right, 93%. Forget two-speeds. It’s more like the one percent is in a fast lane and the rest are stalled in the parking lot. We have yet to see how 2010-2012 plays out. Markets were not nearly as strong in 2010 and 2011 as they were in the second half of 2009. Yet it seems clear that the one percent will outperform the 99ers, just as they have for the past three expansions. In his paper, Saez charts the incomes gains and losses of the one percent over the past two expansions and recessions. His finding show that the wealthy gain more during expansions but — and here’s the catch — they also lose more during recessions than the rest of the population. The one percenters lose more than three times as much as the rest of the population during downturns, due to falling markets, according to Saez. It’s further proof of our new age of manic, “High-Beta” wealth. Here are the numbers: CYCLE TOP 1% INCOME GROWTH 99% INCOME GROWTH1993-2000 – 98.7% 20.3% 2001 Recession – (30.8%) (6.5%) 2002-2007 – 61.8% 6.8% 2007 Recession — (36.3%) (11.6%) 2009-2010 — 11.6% 0.2% What’s also noteworthy about the numbers is that the top 1% gained a greater share of income in 2002-2007 expansion than they did in the 1993-2000 expansion. Saez says that this difference “may help explain the disconnect between the economic experiences of the public and the solid macroeconomic growth posted by the U.S. economy from 2002 to 2007.” He added that “it also may help explain why the dramatic growth in top incomes during the Clinton administration did not generate much public outcry while there has been a great level of attention to top incomes in the press and in the public debate since 2005.” Of course, the higher unemployment rate this time and the Wall Street bail-outs might have been bigger factors. What do you think will happen to incomes of the 1% and 99ers this year? What do you think will happen to incomes of the one percent and 99ers this year?

It’s well known by now that Mitt Romney is the third richest Presidential candidate in recent history. It’s not as well known, however, where his more than $200 million fortune is invested or accounted for.

According to a new analysis from Wealth-X, the wealth research firm, Romney has about $35 million of his fortune in cash, cash equivalents and gold.

He also has $52 million in Federal Home Loan Bank Securities, a government agency that issues low-risk bonds. He has $72 million in scattered market investments. His private equity investments account for 20% or more of his portfolio.

His four homes are barely a drop in the bucket, even though they have a combined value of more than $17 million.

Oh, and he has $500,000 in horses.

While not that unsual for a rich guy, Romney’s portfolio is sure to become politicized. The left will no doubt argue that his large cash horde is an argument for why the rich should be taxed more, since the money is not being invested in businesses or jobs. They might also point out the hypocrisy of a private-sector champion investing so much in government-related entities.

Republicans may argue that Romney’s investments show the true nature of responsible wealth today. He’s not putting most of his money into yachts and private palaces, he’s putting the bulk of his money into the economy and businesses.

What do you think of Mitt’s investments?

UPDATE: This post was updated to correct the private equity category, which is a large share of Romney’s portfolio. Wealth-X said it’s numbers are derived by using the mid-point of the values provided in Romney’s election disclosures.

In 1982, when Forbes first launched its Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, the richest American was shipping tycoon Daniel Ludwig, with a net worth of a measly $2 billion.

Bloomberg News

The names and numbers have changed dramatically since then. But the Forbes list – and rich lists in general – have largely remained the same. They are annual or semi-annual, semi-educated guesses on how rich the super-rich really are.

Yet now, a truly new kind of rich list has debuted. And it may set the standard for all the others.

Unlike Forbes and the others lists —and there are plenty others, from China’s Hurun Index, to the Times Rich List in the U.K. – the Bloomberg Index is updated daily.

If you want to know what Warren Buffett or Carlos Slim or Larry Ellison is worth today, you can get it. Forbes, however, will only give you a number that could be more than five months old. In today’s financial markets, five months is an eternity, and people’s wealth can spike and crash overnight.

(Of course,whether the world really needs real-time net worth estimates on billionaire’s is a separate question).

“It’s not fair to give readers a net worth from four or five months ago,” said Matt Miller, the Bloomberg editor in charge of the Billionaire’s Index, who used to co-edit the Forbes Worlds’ Billionaire’s list.

Of course, rich lists are just estimates. They are popular precisely because they’re willing to put a hard dollar number on the personal wealth of the super-rich. Yet in truth, no one really knows what many of the super-rich are worth at any given moment (including the super-rich themselves).

Many of them own private companies, which are hard to value until they’re sold. And they often have debts, secret accounts, financial obligations and other investments that don’t show up to the public (or even their spouses).

The Bloomberg listers say their estimates may be more accurate than the competition’s because they have better data and reporting (from the Bloomberg terminals and its reporting staff).

The estimates are updated daily from the fresh data – whether it’s changes in a company stock price or private company, or a shift in commodity markets or other asset values.

Bloomberg also shows its readers what’s behind its’ estimates and how the wealth is deconstructed, though that feature is only available to terminal users.

“We wanted to be transparent,” said Miller.

Bloomberg only has 20 billionaires listed so far. But there is already one who differs dramatically on both list: Ingvar Kamprad.

Forbes lists the Ikea founder as being worth $6 billion. Bloomberg lists him at $42 billion. Miller said that while Forbes doesn’t count the Ikea shares Kamprad holds in his foundation, Bloomberg does.

It seems to be heretical these days to talk about the falling fortunes of the one percenters. But facts are facts.

Everett Collection

And the facts, according to a new report from the IRS, are that the incomes of the top one percent fell in 2009, just as they did in 2008 and 2007.

The total adjusted gross income of the top one percent fell more than 20% in 2009 to $1.33 trillion, down 35% from their peak in 2007.

To become part of the one percent in 2009, a household needed $343,927 in adjusted gross income. That’s down from $380,354 in 2008. (To get into the top 0.10 percent, you eneded $1.4 million in income, down from $1.8 million in 2008 and $2.1 million in 2007).

The taxes paid by the one percent also fell. They paid $318 billion in taxes in 2009, compared to $450 billion in 2007. As a result, their share of total U.S. income taxes paid fell to 36.7% in 2009 from 40% in 2007.

Of course, many on the left argue that the actual tax rates paid by the one percenters are at “all-time lows.” Again, that would be wrong.

The top one-percenters paid an average rate of 21.39% in 2009, up from 20.63% in 2007. That’s because they earned less from capital gains. (Apparently, not all the one-percenters are as lucky as Warren Buffett, who pays closer to 17%.)

Of course, none of this denies that the top one-percenters don’t earn boatloads of money. They do, after all, account for 17% of all of the nation’s income in 2009, even though that was down from 20% in 2008.

And 2010 and 2011 may have seen gains by the one percent, though the markets did not perform as well the past two years as it did during the rebound in 2009.

Yet the IRS data proves that the rich don’t just get richer. We live in a new age of High-Beta Wealth, where the incomes and wealth of the top one-percenters is prone to rapid rises – and sudden falls — with financial markets.

The debate over taxing the rich may have reached fever pitch in the U.S. But the question of whether and how to tax the rich dates back centuries–to Ancient Greece, to be specific.

Everett Collection

According to a piece by historian Ronda R. Cook in the Allentown Morning Call, the city-state of Athens in the fourth and fifth century B.C. had two ways of raising revenue from the rich.

In times of war and other emergencies, “the Athenians, voting in Assembly, levied a special tax (eisphora) on the more well-to-do citizens of the polis, approximately the upper one-third.” It was a tax on assets not income, though Cook doesn’t specify the amounts.

Athens also employed a system of liturgies, which required the rich to pay for certain public services. These included paying for the choruses for the plays presented at Dionysus festivals. But they were also called on to pay directly for larger public works, like warships, when needed.

The Assembly picked the government projects; then chose the rich people to fund them. The rich donors had little say in the process. Surprisingly, the rich rarely complained and most spent more on the projects than required.

The theory, Cook says, is the same as the proposed tax on the one-percent: “Those who have benefited from their society have an obligation to give back to it–generously. The wealthy Athenian would have acknowledged that his good fortune could not have been possible apart from the polis.”

Of course, ancient Athens is not the U.S. But Cook says that requiring the rich to fund public projects (distinct from their own philanthropy) might be worth considering.

I’ve written before about the idea of having rich people build roads and bridges, which could then bear their names (why should colleges and hospitals have all the fun with naming rights?). Yet the idea could be even broader to appeal to rich people’s interests.

Larry Ellison could give $500 million to the government and have a battleship named after him. The CDC could simply merge with the Gates Foundation and be called “The Gates Centers for Disease Control”And wealthy anti-immigration donors could fund a new wall around Mexico.

Ridiculous? Of course. But the idea that the rich owe some of their success to the their country has a long history, going back long before Obama and Occupy Wall Street.

He was the Chicago Law School professor who wrote a blog post saying that his household salary of more than $250,000 didn’t make him “rich.”

It was, on its face, a very reasonable post. He said that while Obama was labeling quarter-million earners as “wealthy,” $250,000 really didn’t get you very far if you were a family living in a major city. “Like most working Americans,” Henderson wrote, “insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses.”

If his taxes went up, he said, he would have to cut back.

The blog post ignited a new class battle on the web and Henderson – who was virulently attacked on the web as a “rich whiner” — eventually pulled his blog post and retreated from the public eye.

Today, the class warriors have a new target: Andrew Schiff. Schiff is the head of communications and marketing at a Connecticut brokerage firm (Euro Pacific Capital Inc) that’s owned by his brother, Peter Schiff.

Andrew is quoted extensively in a Bloomberg article on bonuses. In the piece, Schiff says his $350,000 salary just isn’t enough. “I feel stuck,” he told Bloomberg.

He says he struggles to pay rent for their duplex in Brooklyn, as well as the summer rental in Connecticut and the $32,000 a year tuition for his daughter’s private school.

“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff told Bloomberg. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”

He said that it would cost at least $1.5 million to buy even a modest apartment nearby.

“All I want is the stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had,” adding that he “didn’t want to whine.”

I called Schiff and he confirmed his quotes in the article. He said that the main point he was trying to make was that the costs of living well in New York have soared beyond the reach of even the affluent.

“Look, I know my salary of $350,000 is high,” he said. “My whole point is that education and housing in New York are now priced for the wealthy, not the garden variety wealthy. I’m not living high on the hog and going to St. Barts. I mean my summer rental is bare bones, it’s not the Hamptons. ”

He also said that 48% of his salary goes to taxes. “The taxes I pay are absurd,” he said. “Between Federal, New York state and local.”

Fair enough. But Schiff is guaranteed to become the new Henderson, and possibly become the poster child for the “whiny rich.” He may be struggling in his own world, but to the rest of America, he may have little to complain about.

When I asked Schiff about the potential fallout, he said: “Let them tar and feather me, I don’t care. I make what I make. And I’m not complaining about that.”

Mitt Romney’s wealth gaffes have become so common now they barely get noticed in the news. But that shouldn’t stop us from enjoying them.

Over the past two days, Romney added some new classics to his already impressive oeuvre of out-of-touch rich-guy quotes. The “couple of Cadillacs” comment and “Nascar owners” flub – both attempts to prove his gritty car-guy credentials in Motown — shows just how off-key Romney has become as a man of the people.

There are sure to be more, of course. While Romney has now admitted that his rich-guy gaffes have hurt his campaign, he just can’t help it. He’s rich. And once you’re rich, it’s hard to stop thinking like a rich person. As he said himself:

“If people think there’s something wrong with being successful in America, then they better vote for the other guy.”

In that spirit, here are the top 10 Romney wealth quotes. And remember, this is just the primary!

1 – My wife “drives a couple of Cadillacs”

2 – “I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.”

3 – Annual speaking income of $370,000 is “not very much”

4 – “I’m also unemployed.”

5 — “I like being able to fire people”

6 – “Corporations are people, my friend.”

7 – “I’ll tell you what. Ten thousand bucks. A $10,000 bet.”

8 – “I’m not concerned about the very poor”

9 – “There are times when I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip.”

10 – Romney on Newt Gingrich: “He’s a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany’s, you’re not a middle class American.”

When I first started covering the very rich, a wealth manager gave me this piece of advice: “The very rich are like the unemployed, except they don’t have the edifying focus of trying to find a job.”

In his new e-book, “Rich Man Poor Man,” the right-leaning comedian Adam Carolla takes the idea even further, making a case that the rich and poor have many things in common.

Of course, many will find Carolla’s analogies between rich and poor highly offensive. Some are also a stretch (both rich and poor “use ladders with wheels,” “wear eye patches,” “keep liquor in a sack” and “use shovels on construction sites.”)

And Carolla is perhaps best known for calling the Occupiers “a bunch of (expletive) self-entitled monsters.” He has been a strong supporter of the wealthy in the current class divide.

But he’s a comedian folks. So here are 7 amusing examples from the e-book:

1 – Outdoor Showers. “Rich Guys Ladies always rinse off in the outdoor shower so “there’s no chance of his wife finding a rogue hair on the shower floor when she gets back from rehab.” Poor guys have no shower, so they use the neighbor’s hose.

About The Wealth Report

The Wealth Report is a daily blog focused on the culture and economy of the wealthy. It is written by Robert Frank, a senior writer for the Wall Street Journal and author of the newly released book “THE HIGH-BETA RICH.”

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